What book are you reading?

The audiobook.

 

That's a tough one to do as audio. I didn't remember much of it after reading it straight through the first time. Now I usually just read one section, then ponder it for a day or so before I read the next. I find I can recall and apply the points a lot better this way.

A couple of other books I had to read the same way were "The 33 Strategies of War" and "The 48 Laws of Power". Great books discussing similar subjects, but not books that you can really expect to learn and apply all the points of if you read them straight through.

 

Moby D1ck

 

Games of thrones book 3

 

I've been slowly trekking through Hemingway's In Our Time. It has been pretty decent, although I've never been a huge fan of Hemingway anyway. Trying to get through an internet course, so I can at least keep my mind a bit active while I'm out of school.

 

Ray Kurzweil - How to Create a Mind

If you're interested in Neuroscience and/or AI, this book is for you. If that's the case, this is a summary of the various sections of the book.

 

Trails in the Sand, by Peter Dragon

 

Finishing up volume 1 of Sherman's Memoirs...

 

I'm almost finished with the fourth and last book of the Eragon series.

 

I just read them all a few weeks ago. I really liked them but I did think the ending of the last book was a bit rushed. Almost like J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter...I got the feeling the Author of Eragon etc though the book was getting too large so he abruptly cut it off and ended it.

 

Right now I'm reading The Elenium Series by David Eddings. I finished book 1 "The Diamond Throne" and am now in book 2 "The Ruby Knight." I've already read the series and everything else Eddings has put out...but he's one author who's always good for a re-read or two or ten.

 

History of the Russian Revolution by Leon Trotsky!

Greatest explanation of the Revolutionary process ever written!

 

I liked that series a lot. In fact, I loved all of his fantasy work, but I have to say that I didn't personally like either of his non-fantasy books that I read. They were just a bit too depressing for me.

 

I tried to read "High Hunt" but couldn't. It was like trying to read Stephen King writing of a romantic novel. With King I would always be waiting for the "scare" and with Eddings I kept waiting for the "fantasy" and it never showed up. I also tried to read his series about the "cat goddess" but it seemed too much like "The Belgariad and the sequels" and "The Elenium and it's sequels". I must say that I did think that the Elenium series was a rip off of The Belgariad but I have changed my mind now. I think I thought that because I had read them all one right after the other. This time I started reading The Elenium and have not read the Belgariad in over a year and they don't seem to be such a mirror image of each other. Of course Ehlana and Cenedra seem to be the same character...both spoiled brats who feel that their husbands should be at their beck and call even if they're out SAVING the world! But I've heard a lot of people say that Sephrenia and Polgara were the same too but I'm not seeing it. Polgara was a law unto herself. She was stubborn and willful and didn't really care what ANYBODY thought...it was her way or the highway.Sephrenia seemed a bit more tolerant and she didn't keep secrets about the important things. She seemed more fragile even though she came off as powerful as Polgara. But I have to say I loved "The Diamond Throne" but once Ehlana was "saved" Sparhawk became severely P^ssy whipped and the backbone went out of the stories.

 

Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

 

I'm reading A Dance of Dragons, the fifth book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R.R. Martin. SO much better than the Game of Thrones TV series.

On my Kindle I'm reading Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon. Pretty good so far. I spent 25 years in the SF Bay Area and lots of time on Telegraph Ave., which runs through Berkeley and Oakland, so I love all the local references.

 

I'm enjoying reading this book at the moment:



Vikings is the third book from Scottish archaeologist, historian, TV presenter and author Neil Oliver. Like his two previous books - A History of Scotland and A History of Ancient Britain - it is based on the BBC TV series of the same name which he presented.



The Vikings famously took no prisoners, relished cruel retribution, and prided themselves on their blood-thirsty skills as warriors. But their prowess in battle is only a small part of their story, which stretches from their Scandinavian origins to England and even as far afield as Newfoundland in the west and Baghdad in the east.

As the Vikings did not write their history, we have to discover it for ourselves, and that discovery, as Neil Oliver reveals, tells an extraordinary story of a people who, from the brink of destruction, reached a quarter of the way around the globe and built an empire that lasted nearly 200 years.

Drawing on the latest discoveries that have only recently come to light, Neil Oliver goes on the trail of the real Vikings. Where did they emerge from? How did they really live? And just what drove them to embark on such extraordinary voyages of discovery over 1000 years ago? VIKINGS will explore many of these questions for the first time in an epic story of one of the world's great empires of conquest.

Oliver's style is lively. He places himself inside the events which he records, imagining for example a young girl in a red dress running around a Danish port, and vividly recording the daily lives of the marauding invaders. He explains how the Vikings took on many of the characteristics of the countries where they moved, fitting smoothly into other societies: besides of course demanding obedience by bitter fighting. A Viking could never be separated from his axe and knife. But they are the forerunners of most of the European societies which we know today: including our own in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

 

Very interesting book.

 

Kindly Inquisitors by Jonathan Rauch,

http://reason.com/archives/2013/11/15/kindly-inquisitors-revisited

 

SOLE SURVIVOR
by
Derek Hansen

An unbelievably good read.
A fantastic novel, and a wonderful period piece.

 

I'm reading an old copy of "No Blade of Grass." It takes place in fifties England after a virus wiped out all grasses. Much of Europe lapsed into anarchy and the Brits believed they were able to feed their population with root crops while finding an antidote to the virus. One of the main characters with connections learned the government planed to seal the cities and nuke them to insure a food supply for the rest. Our heroes shot their way out of London and headed north toward a brother's fortified farm as civilization disintegrated.

 

The Black Mountain by Rex Stout

 

Nuke cities, save civilization… Interesting idea.

 

Our Occulted history: Do the Global Elite conceal Ancient Aliens? by Jim Marrs

This book should be taught in classes. So many lies in our traditional school teaching.

 

Re-reading Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh...a great read, very blunt and often crude, but clever. It's set up like a series of several slice-of-life stories in the lives of the characters, most of whom are heroin addicts or former criminals. It's dark, obviously, but it's got some humor. It's written entirely in the local Edinburgh dialect, though (kind of like Huck Finn)- personally, I think that makes it fun to read, but I know it annoys some people...

Also reading Independent People by Halldor Laxness...it's about a bunch of Icelandic farmers in the early 20th century, but it's quite poetic. Very hard to get through, though. I normally read things pretty fast, and this is the kind of book that you have to read at a very leisurely pace in order to take everything in completely. It's set in the 1930s, but you wouldn't know it- it shows how Iceland (up until then) had remained pretty much the same as it had been since it was first settled, and how isolated it was from the rest of the world's affairs.

Both are great books- I definitely recommend them!